Re: Annan blames Ethiopia...

While we wait for the worker's paradise to come, what do we do about the 
immediate burning issues?  Let us please remember that the victims of the 
region in question do not have the luxury to wait.  they look and wait for 
concrete action and help.  And I can bet that they won't appreciate grand 
ideological discussions, no matter how lofty, and that only serve to 
obstruct their plight and dire situation.  No one here is defending 
dictators and gangsters!  But there are priorities, long term versus 
immediate problems. There are gangsters who are retreating for whatever 
reason and gangsters who are currently aggressive and exacerbating a bad 
situation to worse.  Mixing and confusing all these issues is worse than 
doing nothing and something that only ivory tower academics in the West can 
afford.   Polemics can wait!

Alexy

Ethiopia: Famine, War, and Environmental Destruction - Nature to Blame?

By Seyoum Hameso

As it happened in the seventies and the eighties, the western media is once
again focusing in a
disaster situation in Ethiopia. Only a few months into the new millennium, a
potentially devastating
event is unfolding. While international attention is useful in leading to
temporary relief measures,
it fails to address the fundamental problems that cause the recurrence of 
such
emergencies.

In this brief article, I ask if all is gloom and doom imposed by nature or 
if
the hands of people
gave added impetus for destruction. In other words, are the people of that 
area
destined to doom and
stories of doom or is it something that can be solved, given the human will?

The working assumption here is that while it is easy to blame nature (for 
one it
dos not know how to
enter into dispute), the problem at hand is as much man-made. The readily
available hands for
implication are of those people who are in a position to do something, 
those 
who
can decide and
devise social, political and economic policies that bedevil the lives of
ordinary people.

It should be clear from the outset that drought and other natural 
calamities 
do
strike in any part
of the world. It is the policy of the governments that lessens their 
impacts.
Drought does not
translate itself directly to famine if the people have enough reserves, if
distribution of resources
including food materials is fair. But that is not the case with the 
consecutive
Ethiopian regimes
who care for something other than the peoples.

One would argue that these regimes brought famine conditions to the 
population
groups. For example,
Menelik was preoccupied with his expansionary war to the south when a Great
Famine struck in 1896.
According to imperial chronicles, the situation was so bad that, in these 
days,
some form of
cannibalism was practised.

A little over a half a century, Haile Selassie had a badly reported fight 
in 
his
hands with Ogaden
and Eritrea when nearly a million people perished in 1973-74. The regime 
that
was supported by the
West did crumble by the combination of Western camera exposure and 
overbearing
local dissent. The
places that famine struck hard, including Wollo and Tigray were not the 
regime’s
favourite areas, as
they were complicated by traditional feudal power rivalries. Unhealthy
distribution of resources,
mainly land and destructive exploitation of nature and people led to a 
situation
where peasant
farmers were in no position to resist any drought condition. In other words,
they lost their
resilience to natural hazards. War worked to complicate matters. 
Traditionally
northern warlords of
Ethiopia thrived in the business if war and banditry which is only 
‘modernised’
by imperial
centralisation. Here as elsewhere the first victims of banditry are 
peasants. So
they were in 1973.

In 1984, the world media was again preoccupied with another round of gloom.
Famine was back again.
The military regime of Mengistu Hailemariam had one vision: build a 
communist
empire. Revolution was
what his regime proclaimed as it toppled the dying feudal autocracy. No one
asked the cost, and no
one cared to measure it. The slogan was: build ‘it’ at any cost. It did not
matter if that cost was
the loss of millions of lives, or dashed hopes and opportunities. The word
‘building’ seemed
positive, but the actions were about destruction of humanity.The 1984 famine
follwed a protracted
war in different parts of the Ethiopian empire: war with Ogaden, war with
Eritrea and Tigray, war
within the establishment, the red terror, etc… Mengistu’s atrocities did 
not 
end
there. The
villagisation and resettlement programmes were projects that would be 
planned by
devils. And all
Ethiopian regimes have been closer to one. The villagasation programme was a
communist experiment in
a terribly poor empire. It made everyone equally destitute, and Mengistu 
learned
the lessons long
after M. Gorbachev of the then Soviet Union. The poverty that visited upon 
the
rural families by
ruthless policies, the environmental damage that malicious resettlement 
programs
engendered, and the
ruthless execution of war which led to famine was openly described by the
western journalists. They
declared the place something nearer to hell on hearth. For millions of 
people
whose voices are
crushed and repressed, the place has been a hell for nearly a century.

        zNow come the year 2000. No one reported in 1973 and 1984 that the
magnitude of the problem
is as huge as it is today. About eight million people are threatened with
famine. The world is now
surprised why all this is happening in the lands where only a few years ago 
the
regime’s officials
were outspoken in saying their programs help rural communities (where more 
than
85% of the whole
populations live), that food self-sufficiency was achieved.

The current Tigrean ethno-national regime is only nearly a decade long, but 
the
blunders it commits
have no proportions or precedents. No one community or national group is at 
ease
with the policies
of TPLF/EPRDF regime. Since its coming to power in 1991, all aspects of 
life 
are
politicised. Its
‘federal’ regional policies are a sham, as The Economist magazine has once
noted. Its democratic
record is a shambles. Its human rights record are, if anything, worse. Its
economic policies are
full of contradictions; they are full of favouritism and open disregard of
humane change and
socio-political balance. Political corruption is rife while the regime’s
evaluation and transparency
measures focus on political loyalty more than on anything else.

For over a period of years the regime went into war with neighbouring 
countries
using all the
pretexts it can manipulate. At one time it fights ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ 
(e.g.
Somalia), a
crusader of the 20th century. At another time, it becomes a peacemaker 
fighting
lawlessness outside
its jurisdiction (e.g. in Kenya and Somalia). All along, since 1992, it 
caries
out low level wars
with organised groups that demand self-determination for their people. 
Today 
the
people who live in
the areas where this demand is strong face famine (e.g. Ogaden and Oromia
regions).

Only a few months ago massive fires consumed large forests, the plight of 
which
was not properly
addressed. Again the areas of this calamity are the southern areas such as 
Bale
and Borana in
Oromia, Qoreleh in Ogaden, Malagawondo and Meme in Sidama, and scores of 
areas
in the west as in
Benishangul. The cause of the fires remains suspect but the reasons such as
windy, long dry seasons,
honey collection and land scramble by local populations is lame. Students
demonstrated against the
government’s handling of the fire crisis and they faced hostile response. A 
few
students died in
Ambo, central region of Oromia. Whatever caused the fire, the destruction 
of 
the
forests will have
huge environmental consequences not only for the areas involved concerned 
but
for the region as a
whole. In this regard, one would only appeal to international humanitarian 
and
environmental groups
to pursue the matter and pre-empt further destruction.

The problems do not stop at fires and famine. The regime’s policies of 
inciting
ethno-national
conflicts has displaced thousands among Gedeo and Guji Oromo communities. 
The
regime encourages
artificial divisions within national communities along caste, religious and
regional dimensions. In
many rural areas, the forced sale of fertiliser to peasant farmers and the
method of recouping the
sales proceeds, the heavy tax exactions, and several forms of forced
contributions to TPLF owned and
controlled economic entities made people (rural and urban) exceedingly
vulnerable to natural
mishaps. Problems were observed in Hadiya, in Gambella and in Wolayta 
associated
with the regime’s
policies.

On top of all these, the war with Eritrea which is in its third year is 
exacting
massive burden on
populations in Ethiopia. First came the requirement to safeguard 
‘territorial’
sovereignty and
integrity of the empire. This meant ‘Everything to the War Front’, a 
familiar
tone from the derg
era. The incident in Badme is blown out of proportion causing the massacre 
of
thousands, if not
hundreds of thousands, while the heavy fire in the south did force raise the
eyebrows of the
officials of the regime. Next came the recruitment for war.

This author anticipated in July 1998, only a few months into the beginning 
of
the TPLF war venture
with Eritrea, the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the war. These
meetings were conducted
in Berlin, Germany, and soon in Stockholm, Sweden, and nearly no one in the
international community
heeded the voices of the oppressed people then. And now every one seems
scrambling for what can be
done to relieve the burden of destruction and death primarily imposed by a 
very
bad government. The
same war is not only depleting the natural resources but all kinds of 
resources
that may be
available in future.

To informed audience, it came to no surprise when a minister of Ethiopia 
accused
foreigners for not
responding soon for a disaster his regime has a big hand facilitating the
processes that lead up to
this scenario. As if begging is a business of prudence and pride, it 
dictates
which routes the aid
should come and which should not. It refuses the offer of port services 
from 
a
warring neighbour for
‘moral ' reasons or for reasons only devils understand.

The difference of the TPLF regime of Ethiopia from the past ones is that 
this
one uses all the
pretexts and precedents to pre-empt and trample alternatives. The past 
rulers of
the empire are too
proud to tell the world that people under their, otherwise tragic, rule do
starve in fact. Menelik
had a pretext to hide the great famine behind the war with European fascism.
Haile Selassie had to
hide fascistic famine with the connivance of the western powers. Mengsitu 
had a
project to finish
before accepting his policies were ruthless and contributed to famine. 
Today’s
rulers are the first
to tell all is well and sooner than later admit that all is worse. They 
cannot
avoid today’s media
exposure which contrasts with the deafening silence of the past. For this, 
they
admit the inevitable
and declare bankrupt when everything is out of their handling.

Now the outside world faces a dilemma, as this author does. It is true that
politics affects the
economic and social conditions in any country. It is true that the buck 
stops at
the benches of
officials who impose destructive policies and their sponsors. But the
humanitarian disaster does not
give much time to spend on the luxury of disputing the rights and wrongs of 
the
regime in power. In
the short term, the international community has no alternative other than
looking for ways of
helping those people whose saddening images appear in the screens which 
disturbs
people’s
conscience. Such relief aid may help the dying, but the real help is 
commitment
to humanitarian
approach and to help people to help themselves. That is an issue to be 
addressed
today. While relief
work is as urgent as ever, the need to see long is by far beneficial to the
people affected, to the
region, and even to the world. It is only then that gods will have good time
free from blame.

Go to top | Back to Current Affairs | Home |

Copyright © 1996-2000 THE SIDAMA CONCERN. All Rights Reserved.



This artilce also appears at:
http://www.sidamaconcern.com/current_affairs_horn.html
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com